Shocking media lies by Cliff Kincaid

In a story about the Women’s March on Washington, Time magazine published various “Portraits of Dissent” that included the views of a 17-year-old Calvert County, Maryland, high school senior with the words “Nasty, Queer, Bitch,” marked on her cheeks and forehead. She was quoted as saying rights were in danger because of the Trump presidency and that Vice President Mike Pence “is someone that supports electroshocking people like me to turn us into people we aren’t.”

Pence never said any such thing. But where did this fictional and irrational claim come from? And why did Time publish this lie?

A new report from the National Task Force for Therapy Equality to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) identifies precisely where many of the false claims are originating. The report, entitled, “Lies, Deception, and Fraud,” accuses the Southern Poverty Law Center, Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights of a hate campaign designed to ban psychotherapy for individuals with sexual and gender identity conflicts.

You may recognize the Human Rights Campaign as the pro-Obama group that furnished a speaker for the FBI’s recent gay “pride” summit.

In one case documented in the report, a transgendered woman associated with a New Jersey homosexual-rights organization claimed she had been tortured at a “conversion therapy camp” and that it constituted “child abuse.” But no such camp ever existed. It did exist in a 1999 movie, “But I’m a Cheerleader,” starring drag queen RuPaul. In Washington State, gay rights advocates claimed that children were subjected to shock therapy and ice baths to get them out of the lifestyle. No evidence of such practices was ever presented.

Evidence shows that same-sex attractions can be changed through counseling and can result from bad relations with a parent or sexual abuse. Indeed, the Restored Hope Network (RHN), representing the largest coalition of ex-homosexual ministries in the world, just held a national conference.

The National Task Force for Therapy Equality is part of the Equality And Justice For All, a coalition of psychotherapists, psychiatrists, physicians, public policy organizations and clients. The co-coordinator, Christopher Doyle, is a former homosexual who says that therapy changed his life. He is now married to his wife and they have five children.

Despite claims in the media that people are born gay, this is a myth perpetuated by left-wing homosexual organizations. There is no scientific evidence for the claim. Another myth is that counseling away from same-sex attraction involves shock therapy. There is no evidence whatsoever that the technique has been used or coerced on children or adolescents to modify sexuality.

Perhaps the best known of the three organizations cited above, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), calls the idea of counseling homosexuals to leave the lifestyle “quackery.”

The SPLC has a notorious reputation, even on the left. It raises money by using terms like “homophobia” and “Islamophobia” to demonize people supporting traditional Christian values. The group’s “Hate Map” of conservative organizations inspired a homosexual militant to launch a terrorist attack on the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council in 2013. It was “liked” on Facebook by the left-wing Bernie Sanders supporter who tried to massacre a group of Republicans at a baseball game outside of Washington, D.C.

Its fundraising practices, which have generated a reserve fund of about $300 million, are at the heart of the complaint by the National Task Force for Therapy Equality to the FTC. The FTC complaint asks for action to be taken against the three organizations because they use “deceptive and fraudulent” claims. Such claims, of course, are prominently featured in the liberal media, which regularly refer to the SPLC as a “civil rights” organization.

On a national basis, six liberal states and several cities and jurisdictions have passed legislation banning licensed psychotherapy for minors with unwanted same-sex attractions and general identity conflicts. The legislation has been driven mostly by the three organizations mentioned above and local homosexual groups working with them.

Still, most states have refused to follow. And the 2016 Republican Party platform declared, “We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children.”

Bans on therapy also harm people who have been victims of sexual abuse and developed a same-sex attraction as a result of the abuse. The Equality and Justice for All website notes, “Children who have been molested by a same-sex adult and are confused about their sexual orientation as a result of the sexual abuse will be denied access to therapy simply because it is not gay-affirming. In effect, a child will be molested twice—first by the perpetrator and then again by the political environment, which refuses to treat the child unless he sees a gay-affirming therapist.”

Needless to say, as demonstrated by the Time magazine “Portrait of Dissent” cited earlier, some people seem to think that methods of brutal force are used to turn people away from the gay lifestyle. In fact, psychotherapy involves talking to people who want to leave their state of sexual confusion or unwanted sexual attraction through what are called “sexual orientation change efforts.”

While the FTC complaint has received some coverage from conservative and Christian news organizations, the major media have remained mostly silent. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that all of the major news organizations, including Fox News, financially underwrite the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association and follow its dictates. This group, which now accepts transgendered and “queer” people, asserts in the face of the scientific evidence that gays are born that way and that choice has nothing to do with it. Yet, the wife of New York City Mayor Bill “Red Bill” de Blasio is an ex-lesbian.

The claim by the young lesbian in Time magazine that Vice President Pence “supports electroshocking people like me” is an example of the falsehoods that continue to be peddled by the media. What Pence did say, in a 2000 campaign statement, was that he supported providing assistance to “those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”

Only in a culture dominated by a pro-homosexual media would such a statement be considered offensive and transformed into a demand for shocking homosexuals out of their lifestyle.

The only shock therapy practiced today is a form of media bias that makes sexual perversion acceptable and eliminates any mention of the ability to change or even cure a lifestyle that carries major health risks.

Written by Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism.

I remember when Time magazine would have been considered a source in English Composition 101 years ago. How things have changed! Although the left has always been directly in charge of the media during my 60 plus years, their influence was usually subtle or covert. Naturally, there were exceptions with their hatred of the US military and the soldiers during the Vietnam Conflict, and arguably the US itself with its democratic and capitalist tenants.

However, there was always the belief that the mainstream media might show their leftist bias from time to time and in the editorials, yet they would nevertheless report the facts for the most part.

That changed. I do not trust the MSM to even report the facts correctly. How they frame the story, how little coverage is given to the conservative viewpoint, the outright omission of covering some stories like black racism, guns used in self-defense, any history of the crimes of communism, etc.

The slavish devotion and refusal to question President Obama was a red warning of how far they would go. Then came their active campaigning for Hillary Clinton and their subsequent refusal to accept that their side lost. Perhaps the MSM's ego was severely damaged; after all, the herd did not listen to our enlightened masters in the media. Then came the fake news: Hillary really won the election since she won the popular vote, the Russians hacked the election, Trump colluded with the Russians, etc.

Hence, I have arrived at the point where I no longer trust the mainstream media to even report the news objectively. I do not necessarily believe that everything they say is a lie, but I do not rule out that they will lie. Remember how the story in Fergusson, Missouri, went from the robber getting shot while trying to take a policeman’s gun from him to “the white police officer who shot the unarmed black man”? The media has lost our trust, Time magazine is not to be trusted or read, and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a front group for leftists. It is a real shame that the media cannot be trusted in reporting, but at least now there can be no denying the obvious.

Diary of Dreams performs at the 2016 M’era Luna festival in Hildesheim, Germany. M’era Luna, “one of the biggest dark music events in Germany,” is held each year on the second weekend in August. Close to 25,000 people attend the festival annually to hear gothic, metal and industrial music performed on two large festival-style stages.